Village Inn Pancake House – West Tampa Diner Review

Village Inn Pancake House is a chain restaurant that seems to always be on everyone ‘late night’ or ‘early morning’ list for breakfast. While the inside décor needs a bit of updating, we think that he food is actually pretty good and with the seemingly endless options, never boring. Our review is of the West Tampa location just off Kennedy and Dale Mabry.

Village Inn has a menu similar to the ‘other’ chain restaurants that offer breakfast all day and they have a pretty large lunch/dinner menu as well. Breakfast isn’t the cheapest in town, but the portions are large and you definitely leave full.

The skillet breakfast options are popular, but be sure you want to splurge on most of your calories for the day. I personally like the ‘create your own’ combination options on the menu and found it a great deal.

We missed the rush, seated immediately and had our drinks in no time. Our server was helpful with suggestions and had our food out of the kitchen in maybe 15 minutes.

French Toast Combo ($8.49) – one egg, four slices of vanilla-battered French bread toast served with your choice of hickory-smoked bacon or two sausage links (I went for the bacon).

I normally don’t order French toast, but this was one of the better versions I’ve had. It had a slight vanilla flavor and was slightly crisp on the outside. The fluffy inside gave a nice ‘comforting’ texture and the syrup topped it off well. The bacon was thick and cooked perfectly and seemed to be cooked to order. The egg was fresh, but I should have had them hold it since there was egg already in the French toast batter.

This was actually the server’s suggestion for Jeff and said the ranchero sauce was a must. The omelet was packed with fillings and everything was very fresh. The ranchero sauce was more like salsa, but went really well with the omelet. The hash browns were crisp, but a little on the greasy side. The pancakes were fluffy and were probably not necessary for this dish as there was already so much food. Then again this is the Village Inn Pancake House.

We enjoyed our breakfast and plan on making The Village Inn a regular stop, especially for those late, late night meals. The Village Inn Pancake House is located at 215 North Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33609

Jeff is the other half of Team FoodieFrog. A Floridian born & raised and University of Florida graduate, he spends his days as an insurance agent (yawn). The rest of the time, he says he’s our webmaster, but we don’t know exactly what he does. His previous experience includes advertising sales for Creative Loafing Newspaper (love that name) and being known on a first name basis at many fast food restaurants.

Help your fellow Foodies out and send us an email to suggest or recommend any local restaurants or diners we should try. Even though our "lilly pad" is located in the Tampa Bay Area "pond", we've been known to hop to just about anywhere for a good meal.